Square’s New App Wants to Be Better Than Seamless

You place your order for a triple, no foam, almond milk latte and realize (crap) you don’t have any cash on you. This should be less of a surprise since… you never have cash on you. But who needs Benjamins on your person with Square here to save the day/your broke butt at more and more of your favorite spots? The debit card user’s BFF is banking on room for improvement in another area of your life with new app Square Order.

Right now only available in San Francisco and NYC, Square Order lets you place orders at cafes, restaurants, even supermarkets on your smartphone. You get pinged when it’s ready for pickup and payment (naturally) happens through the app.

This was one of those “out with the old, in with the new” situations — Square Order’s entrance coincides with the exit of Square Wallet, which let you pay for your daily cup of Joe + more with just your smartphone. A Square rep reassured The Verge that Wallet users won’t be completely abandoned and can expect to see some of their favorite, familiar features on Order eventually. Although new for Square, this concept is far from novel in the app store, with sites like Seamless, Delivery.com, GrubHub, Eat24 (need we go on?) already queued up on smartphones to take on take-out.

Square might have a shot at making you use Order instead of Seamless if it can feature some exclusive restaurants that aren’t in the online ordering game yet. For starters, you’ll be able to use the app to order groceries at San Francisco Whole Foods. We’d also choose Square over the others if they can offer up some coupons and promos that compete with the regular deals on some of the other sites. Human contact is actually something we still like to have in our lives, believe it or not, but we could see a service like this being handy for Starbucks during rush hour or helping to streamline the office group lunch order.